LFL Blog

Empty your toilet flush before going on the road. This is a pain, but we have several problems a year with water and toilet chemical slopping out of cisterns, which cause corrosion on the circuit boards, plus there is the added weight of the water to be considered. If you think you may need the toilet on the journey, it is better to take a squirty bottle with some toilet cleaner it to use as the flush.

Once on site, set the van up horizontally to be sure that your fridge is level and works correctly. Side to side is most critical as the fluids will not be able to circulate properly. If your fridge is not getting cold, this is often the problem, plus it will work more efficiently.

Do not overload your van, and try to make it as balanced as possible. This is for your own safety and to make towing easier, plus police do occasionally do spot checks. Often just moving items around helps. Take into account which side your oven and fridge on, as these obviously add weight. Check your noseweight with scales. Your caravan handbook will list the recommended laden weight. Ensuring this is correct will also increase your fuel economy on your towing vehicle.

Check the condition of your tyres and the pressure of both your van and car tyres. Poorly maintained tyres, such as cracked side walls, can cause accidents. Inspect tread threads and remember that although a tyre may not be illegal, the extra load imposed by the caravan and the contents can cause it to be dangerous. Remember caravan tyres should be replaced every five years. See if your car manufacturer advises the tyre pressures being adjusted when towing.

Clean the tow ball and hitch if it has a stabilizer. The ball should be silver and shiny. Use an emery cloth or sandpaper to achieve this. Then keep it clean with either brake and clutch cleaner, paint thinners or petrol; basically any solvent that is not oil based.

Once on site, uncoil the mains lead fully as this can be a fire risk. When in use, the cable will warm up and if this heat cannot dissipate it will eventually lead to the cable melting and fusing together, possibly even short circuiting and catching fire. If you have excess cable you should always unroll it and lay it out flat on the ground.

Check the wheel nuts. Missing wheel nuts can cause accidents, as can the wheel nuts not being tightened to the correct tension, causing wheels to become detached while towing. The specific torque setting will be in your caravan’s handbook, or if you have had your van serviced with ourselves, the torque settings will be on your service sheet. Use a torque wrench, not the wheelbrace.

Turn your gas bottles off before travelling, and ensure they are strapped securely in an upright position. The law requires that they be switched off at the valve on the cylinder when you are towing.

Check your road lights on the caravan. Make sure the brake lights, indicators and fog lights are all working before every trip.

Remember to put your towing mirrors on the car. Ensure that you can see all the way down both sides of the caravan. This is now a legal requirement.

Our biggest seller on the shop are microswitches,plus we are one of the biggest sellers on this item in the country.You will know if your caravan has a microswitch if under the surface where the tap is fitted there will be some wires leading to the tap.The fault symptom is usually a tap not working unless you turn on another tape elsewhere in the vehicle.The Elegance microswitch has two legs, and the Elite microswitch has three legs.

Elegance microswitch

Elite microswitch

A Whale Elegance tap will look something like this, and an Elite tap like this one.

Elegance tap

Elite tap

DIY fitting of a microswitch in your caravan or motorhome is a simple job requiring little skill or time.All you need to do is get a new switch, pick up a Pozidrive (or Philips) #2 screwdriver and small flat blade, then follow these instructions.

(1) Turn the tap to the OFF position.

(2) You require access to the underside of the tap, so if in the wash room, you can usually access this through the vanity unit under the sink. If not, follow the instructions for the kitchen tap, which is, remove the caps in the four corners of the mounting-plate using a small flat bladed screwdriver or similar and remove the Pozidrive screws under there.Then gently lift the taps up until the microswitch is accessible.

(3) Take note of which way round the legs are as the microswitche's legs are offset and the switch needs to be replaced the same way it comes off.

(4) Gently straighten the legs.

(5) Slide the white plastic collar off the switch down the wires. The switch should just drop off the two remaining lugs.

(6) Remove the two mini spade-connectors off the switch legs.

(7) Refit the mini spade connectors onto the new switch (it does not matter which one goes on which leg, so long as you use the correct legs if there is three).

(8) Offer the microswitch up to the retaining lugs (observing that it must be the same way round as the old one).

All the issues identified by the industry were looked into and and Safefill developed a product that’s so easy to use; has no complicated hoses or attachments that could be incorrectly used; has an integral overfill protection device (OPD); a secondary back check valve in case you forget to close the valve and tamper-proof fittings that mean gas can only come out of the cylinder when it is attached to an appliance.The three bottles from Safefill are all significantly lighter than standard LPG cylinders.

There are no complicated extras to buy or fit as Safefill comes as a complete, one-size-fits all solution. The Safefill translucent bottle allows you to see how much gas is left - so no more estimating, and the automatic overfill protection device means it’s impossible to fill beyond 80%, ensuring complete safety.The other advantage of a Safefill bottle, is that you are the owner. You can only "rent" a Calor bottle, and you never own it, ensuring that you cannot sell it on. Whereas, whenever you have finished with your Safefill bottle, you can sell it on, and helps to repay for itself.You can fill from empty or just top up before leaving on that weekend away.

All that is required is a standard Propane screw-type regulator, or a Propane pigtail. The bottle has the same POL union fittings as the standard Calor bottles. Firstly, the Initial Cost is a lot less. From £153 you get a Safefill bottle that is almost identical to a Calor bottle. This means that your regulator or gas hoses do NOT need replacing or updating. For some, other re-fillable gas systems to be fitted, special hoses, changeover heads, a filling kit, and adapters have to be fitted onto the vehicle. The systems should be fitted by a Qualified Engineer, meaning Labour costs have to be considered.

Also, when your Safefill bottle is empty, you remove the bottle from the vehicle, and take it to the closest Petrol Station or LPG Supplier. However, in a built in system, you can not remove the bottle. Instead, the vehicle has to be taken to the Petrol Station or LPG Supplier. This means that before you have to fill up your bottle, you have to drain your water system, put away your awning, and pack up.

No adapter is needed for filling in the UK and Netherlands, but a few are needed for Europe.There is a specific one for just Spain, which costs £25.An Acme adapter is for Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Lichtenstein, Luxumburg and Switzerland. This one costs £15.The Dish adapter can be used in Austria, Bosnia & Herzogavina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macadonia, Malta, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland. This one is also £15.

We also have a LPG autogas rig, so we can fill your new bottles, and also show you how easy they are to refill in person.

Here is an example of solar panels that we have fitted to a caravan,They were 2 x 160W mono-crystal solar panels fitted with a Stecca PR3030 charge controller.

Once fitted, only the charge controller is visible in the van and one piece of wire inside near the ceiling.

Everything else can be neatly added to the vehicle wiring inside the bed box. The next photos show that the solar panels are producing 3.5 amps in winter sunshine in January. In summer they should peak at around 20A. The second photo shows the state of charge percentage and bar graph. The total cost for this fully installed in January 2019 was £780.

In stock at present, we do have some AGM leisure batteries, which we highly recommend,due to the following reasons.(1) AGM batteries do not spill, therefore they can be mounted anyway up.(2) No venting is required as no Hydrogen is produced.(3)These batteries are lower in height, therefore they fit better under seats in motorhomes, and allow cables to fit over the battery, in caravan or motorhome battery boxes(as you can see from the photo).

(4) They can be charged or discharged at a huge current, much higher than a lead-acid wet battery.(5) AGM batteries have a much lower voltage drop when stored(such as over Winter) compared to a lead-acid battery.(6) They can be discharged further than conventional flooded batteries.We have a limited number of these batteries in stock at present with a 2 year warranty.

These are a fantastic system - for those that don't know, ATC stands for Al-ko Trailer Control. This is an active system that mounts behind the axle of a caravan and monitors the trailer movement. If it detects a 'snake' developing, it activates the trailer's brakes which has the effect of pulling the outfit straight.

This system is so effective that most of the big insurance companies offer a substantial discount if it's fitted.

​Well I was so impressed with the system that I fitted it to my own van when I bought it 3 years ago.

So this was the van - a 2010 Swift Challenger.

First to jack it up and and make secure.

And soon the main unit was fitted and the brake bar adjusted...

Wiring run and connected into vehicle loom...

Status LED fitted to A-frame...

Fully tested and finally ATC sticker applied...

Another customer that is now safer on the road!

Job done!

Total cost to customer is £600 inc VAT - money well spent in my opinion!

It had been well looked after and there wasn't a great deal wrong with it - that is until we were carrying out functional tests on the appliances and measuring the combustion ratios at the flues of all the gas parts of them. The fridge was a shocker!

When we check the combustion ratios we look for a reading of less than 0.0040 and we also take note of the CO ppm. The Thetford fridge in this particular van had a ratio of 0.5266!!!! The CO was 32601ppm - we usually see between 15 and 250!! The fridge had the potential to be lethal!

Now, one of the common problems with this age of Thetford fridge is the burner corroding leading to a sooty flame and so a high combustion ratio and CO reading.

A phone call to the customer revealed that last summer a mobile engineer repaired the fridge because it wouldn't stay lit. Apparently he replaced the burner - the problem, as it turned out was, he replaced it with the wrong one!!!

So we removed the burner, cleaned the flue of all the soot and fitted the correct burner. The difference between the burners can clearly be seen - the correct one is the one on the right hand side.

You wouldn't believe the amount of soot we removed, so couldn't resist a quick snap!

If you get your van serviced or any gas appliance repaired/serviced the engineer should carry out combustion ratio tests and give you a print out for each test.

Here's a before and after print out for the fridge - as you can see the readings are now as low as they should be and a quick inspection of the flame shows it's nice and blue!

Now, whoever charged the customer for the previous dangerous repair could have killed someone! The moral is only let someone who is qualified to do work on gas, touch you gas appliances - ask for their photo ID card (which they should have) and see their certificate (which should be displayed or available to view) - a qualified engineer has to retake the gas accreditation course every 5 years. They should also, always provide you with print out(s), proving that the appliance is safe.

Remember it's yours and your family's life at the end of the day - Job Done!

To be honest we're not too keen on the run-of-the-mill door locks and access handles due to the way they bolt through the vehicle walls - they're just not designed for a 100kg 'orangutan' to hang off them even if the actual bolted-on bits are!

These new locks by Fiamma though mount in a more sensible way - into the door frame itself.

Fitting involves drilling just three holes and comes complete with everything including two high security, circular keys and fixing screws - although we have found the screws to be poor quality and snap whilst fitting and so use our own.

Another nice touch is that the lock cannot be locked into the 'locked' position (that's a lot of locks!!!) without a key, so no one can lock you in you own van (trust us we've seen some that anyone can lock from outside).

There are several versions of this lock, the one we fit is larger than standard, so covers the doors original lock mechanism and screws into the frame.

Below is the final article fitted into position - looks smart and gives you piece of mind - Job Done!

Lock in the 'unlocked' position

Showing how it mounts into the frame

Showing how in the 'locked' position it covers the doors own lock

** Total cost to the customer - £66 (£50 for the lock and 20 minutes labour) inc. VAT **

This one was a Seitz cassette window that is letting in water. The water ingress can be clearly seen as black, mouldy wood. The window is sealed by a rubber gasket on the inside return of the external part of the frame and then an internal frame is clamped using a dozen or so screws through to the external section with caps over.

As a repair, most people just run silicone around the outside of the frame to the body..... Silicone - pht! The stuff should be band! This will last for a few weeks - if you're lucky - then capillary action will result in more water being drawn in than was leaking in before!

The lower damp section of the frame

The upper dry section of the same frame showing the colour difference

The damaged gasket should be replaced and the window refitted, but we don't do it that way - the gasket's failed once, so it will again. We rip the gasket off, run a bead of polymer MS bonder (we use Soudal Fix-All - available in our shop) in the resulting groove and refit the window - ensuring an even spread of excess sealant on all edges.

The excess is then scraped off and the edges 'washed in' with a special solvent (a specific branded Panel-Wipe that doesn't react with the bonder).The result is a very neat finish that guarantees no further leaks as the bonder will out-live the van!

Well that's one less joint that water can now leak through - Job Done!